Daniel Kawczynski: I should like to thank the Secretary of State for that answer, but, according to the First Minister, the conference will net Scotland about £500 million. If that is correct, will he give us a public explanation of how that figure was reached? If towns such as Shrewsbury wish to host international events in future, we should find out whether, in view of the all the trouble created and the need for the police, it would be worth our while making that money available for such tourism.

Nick Harvey: The number of new Members who had no office at the end of each week since the State Opening of Parliament was 120, 119, 98, 64, 30, one and, as of last Friday, nil. The problem is inevitable following an election, but it was exacerbated this year by the requirement to reallocate accommodation for many returning Members in line with the desire of the Accommodation Whips for a rebalancing of office allocation between the parties across the estate.

Lynne Jones: Clause 37 deals with the provision of accommodation under section 4 of the Immigration and Asylum Act 1999. Having made the welcome decision to abolish vouchers for asylum seekers on the grounds of their lack of flexibility and vulnerability to black-market activities, the Government now seem to be introducing them again for failed asylum seekers who cannot be returned home. For various reasons, people from Iraq or Congo may not be able to travel back safely, or it may be unsafe for them to return. Since April, such individuals have been refused cash and given £35 food vouchers. How can that help people who are required to travel to the obligatory reporting centres? How are families with children to purchase nappies? How are women to purchase sanitary items? Will my right hon. Friend do something about it?

David Davis: I will give way in a moment.
	What did the Government promise about the number of immigrants from the new EU accession countries who could apply to live in Britain? They said that there would be between 5,000 and 13,000 such immigrants in a whole year, but there turned out to be 16,000 in one month—nearly 200,000 a year. What was the excuse when Ministers had to face the figures? Well, we were told, more than a third of them were living here already—illegally. It is hard to find words to describe their incompetence. On the subject of incompetence, I give way to the hon. Member for Leicester, East (Keith Vaz).

David Davis: The hon. Gentleman did not answer. He would not tell us whether the figure was 5,000 to 13,000, yet even the Home Secretary at the time said that the 13,000 figure was not his estimate, but the Home Office's. That was an interesting distancing exercise. The raw truth is that more than 190,000 such people have come here in one year. If the hon. Gentleman cannot cope with the truth, that is his problem rather than anyone else's. The simple truth is that large numbers of immigrants have come into this country and the Government have to make a judgment in relation to their points scheme about how many should be coming here on various skill and income levels. How can they possible make that judgment if they confuse themselves by mistaking 192,000 people for 5,000 people?

David Davis: The hon. Gentleman knows that I am a great admirer of him and his parliamentary performances. May I put a difficult question to him? One of the things that concerns me about the way our asylum system works is not just the numbers, but who actually ends up claiming asylum in Britain. About 60 per cent. of the people who claim asylum are young men—a disproportionate number—and the indications are that the filter applied is whether people can find $10,000 to pay the Chinese people traffickers to get to this country. Does he accept that the way we operate at the moment seems to encourage people traffickers and not get the right people to come here?

Greg Mulholland: Let me share with the House a case from my constituency. One of my constituents is married to a British woman while still claiming asylum. She runs a takeaway business, which is, of course, their livelihood. They choose to claim nothing in benefits. Yet, under the current system, if he steps into that takeaway, which is owned by his wife, he can be deported. Does the hon. Gentleman think that that is fair and just way to treat refugees in this country; or does he think it is time the Government changed the legislation and addressed the biggest gap in the Bill, which is that asylum seekers are not allowed to have the dignity of working in this country?

Alistair Carmichael: That is not a million miles away from the position stated in our manifesto at the last general election. The point that we were making in relation to people trafficking is that the focus of Government attention has been all wrong. We should be offering protection to the victims of people trafficking and illegal working instead of treating them as the criminals. We should be giving them support so that we can pursue those responsible—the employers and the traffickers. That would be an eminently sensible and practical way of dealing with the problem, which will only get worse if we continue to go for the low-level victims.
	In his speech, the Home Secretary made brief reference to the establishment of a code of practice under clause 19. Again, I recognise the need for a code of practice, but I am concerned that we have reached Second Reading without seeing even a draft. If we are to take the Bill into Committee in the autumn, the Minister has two or three months to make at least a draft available to Members to consider. Otherwise, the Government are selling us a pig-in-a-poke. We deserve better treatment from the Government. If a code of practice is crucial to the operation of the Bill, as part of the scrutiny of the Bill the House should know what the terms of that code of practice will be.
	The part of the Bill relating to claimants and applicants was described by the Immigration Legal Practitioners Association as
	"a miscellany of the unobjectionable and the deeply worrying."
	Parts, such as clause 37, represent a sensible extension to local authorities of powers currently delegated only to the private sector to accommodate failed asylum seekers and other applicants granted temporary admission or bail pending decision or removal.
	The provision for integration loans to refugees introduced in the Asylum and Immigration (Treatment of Claimants, etc.) Act 2004 was framed with reference to the common-sense and humane policy introduced by the Government in their 1998 White Paper, which granted indefinite leave to remain to refugees at the point of recognition. It is now proposed, under the five-year strategy, to renege on that policy, so the amendment in clause 38 that ensures that integration loans can be provided to refugees with limited leave to remain is to be welcomed as at least limiting the damage. We nevertheless deplore the proposed policy change, which is bound to militate against integration and thus undermine the benefits of the clause by deferring settlement for at least five years. Several practitioners in this area believe that that places the UK in breach of article 34 of the 1951 refugee convention, which obliges contracting states to facilitate the assimilation of refugees, and in particular to make every effort to expedite naturalisation.
	Much of the Bill is capable of improvement. I am not minded to suggest to my right hon. and hon. Friends that we should impede its progress at this stage, but we shall seek very substantial improvements in Committee and thereafter. If those improvements are not forthcoming, the Government should not count on the support of the Liberal Democrats at later stages.

Alistair Burt: My hon. Friend understands my drift; she has also anticipated a point that I was about to make. There is a problem facing the immigration service and those who work at Yarl's Wood. What should they do when people feel an instinctive sympathy with those who are resisting deportation?
	When those allegations were made, I did not go public, heavy with outrage. I went to see the right hon. Member for Kilmarnock and Loudoun (Mr. Browne), then the Minister responsible for these matters, about the need for CCTV to be carried in the escort services' vehicles. He agreed with me that the Government took the allegations seriously, and CCTV cameras were ordered for the vehicles. We have to assume, therefore, that there was some substance to the allegations. Accordingly, I am afraid that the House must assume that physical abuse by the escort services taking people to ports of departure existed, and continues to exist.
	I shall return to the incident of the other week. The allegation was that on 2 May 2005, three Zimbabwean women were taken from Yarl's Wood. They were taken in separate private cars, because the demand for vehicles with CCTV is high and they are not always available. Therefore, there was no CCTV. They were driven to the side of a Kenya Airways airplane, and one woman in the car made it clear that she did not want to go. Each of the detainees was accompanied by three other people, both men and women. As soon as the first woman had made it clear that she did not want to go, all three were seized on and bound, and physical efforts were made to force them on to the plane. On their return to Yarl's Wood, they complained of their treatment, were treated for their injuries, and some were ill for many days subsequently.
	As those are allegations, I will say no more about them, except that I would have thought—I hope that the House agrees—that they were pretty serious. I have therefore asked the Home Office to stop carrying out deportations unless escort services are equipped with CCTV on all occasions, or failing that, to give the detainees the chance to have an independent observer with them. I tabled that written question to the Minister last week, and it has not been answered definitively. Will he say in his wind-up whether no escort service will be used unless there is CCTV or an independent observer, in order to prevent the problems with such allegations? For the sake of the system's integrity, the independent monitoring of the service, as under clause 39, is to be welcomed. I am only sorry that it is needed.
	What of the omissions from the Bill? Last Sunday, I paid another visit to Yarl's Wood to see those women who had been refusing food. I wanted to ensure their welfare and to discuss with the Yarl's Wood authorities what their responsibilities toward them were. I was aware of an incident on the previous day, which was reported subsequently, in which about a dozen women at Yarl's Wood had obstructed the deportation of another detainee and barricaded a room. After a few hours, the authorities were able to regain control without violence or injuries to anyone. The women responsible for the protests and on hunger strike were segregated in a separate unit. I met them, they had free association and plenty of space, and apart from being understandably sad at their situation and distressed at reports of what was happening in Zimbabwe, they were physically well. They were encouraged by reports of what people on both sides of the House are doing to raise the issue of deportations back to Zimbabwe, including the efforts of the hon. Member for Vauxhall (Kate Hoey). They were as puzzled as the rest of us that the Government seemed to be turning a deaf ear to the cry to halt deportations to Zimbabwe.
	The Yarl's Wood authorities appeared to be ready to return those women from segregation to the rest of their friends. Last night, at 10 o'clock, I received a call from the Zimbabwe Association, which told me that three women in segregation had been removed from Yarl's Wood to an unknown destination, without reason, at 9 pm last night. I began to make inquiries—I asked why they had been removed and who had made the decision. Those are the least inquiries to be made by an MP. The Yarl's Wood authorities told me that the ladies had been told that they were going to Colinbrook, a short-term detention centre, but no reason had been given, and it was not the decision of Yarl's Wood to remove them.
	I was given another number to call of an official in the Detention Escort And Population Management Unit—DEPMU. That official sounded nonplussed when I asked him for a reason why the women had been removed . "We don't have to give a reason for moving people around, I was told. He sounded surprised, as if no one had asked him that question before. After a short and heated conservation, in which I indicated that in this country he did indeed have to have a reason for moving people around in the detention estate, I was passed on to someone else—it was now 11 o'clock in the evening. That official was equally surprised to be asked to have a reason. After about 10 minutes of discussion, however, he told me that the women had been placed in Colinbrook because it was ultimately easier to remove them from there to Heathrow— once they had been separated from their friends and their spirit had been broken—and that that was why they were taken away from Yarl's Wood. This lunchtime, I spoke to the deputy head of the immigration service, who was good enough both to confirm that, and to accept responsibility for the move to Colinbrook, on the grounds of what he termed "security".
	I appreciate the courtesy in difficult circumstances of those who spoke to me, because I was not as courteous as I might have been—I was extremely angry—particularly that of the Minister's private secretary, Claire, to whom I was courteous, who spoke to me until 1 o'clock in the morning in her efforts to find out what had happened? Let us examine what I have described, however, in relation to the Bill and its protection for detainees.
	I am immensely concerned that a DEPMU officer's first instinctive response to my question about the reasons why those in detention, who had committed no crime and been removed from friends and supporters, was negative. The deputy director of immigration indicated that that was wrong and that a reason should have been given, and he was clear with his own reasons, but he had had many hours to think of them. I know what I heard at 11 o'clock last night. It was the instinctive reaction of a system that was not regularly challenged and did not like to be challenged—"We don't need to give reasons to move people around." That frightens me. I said to the gentleman that I did not think that I lived in such a country.
	Where in the Bill is a provision to protect detainees from arbitrary decisions, to ensure that when they are given such orders they are given a reason and that those who represent them are given a reason why such a decision has been taken? Many other agencies operating for asylum seekers have alleged for some time that detainees are regularly shunted around, breaking their contact with lawyers or friends, and I have not always believed them. I am not so sure now. I was particularly concerned because two of the three names given to me last night were of people I knew. The first was one of the victims of the alleged assault by the escort service, and the second was an articulate young woman who had acted as spokeswoman for those who had barricaded the room to prevent their friend being removed—two women who had spoken at length to an MP. Was it coincidence that they were two of the three removed, or, in a bid to ensure security, was it tactically astute to remove those who had had contact with an Opposition MP, or perhaps it was natural that those who would speak to me would probably be the sort of people who would encourage their friends? I do not know the answer.
	If the latter is the case, however, and it might be, may I make a plea to the Minister on behalf of my constituents who work at Yarl's Wood? They are having to implement policy, segregate ringleaders and subdue the spirit of those who are resisting removal, all to help our country send women back to a country that is a byword for tyranny. Should those women resist, as my hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Bedfordshire (Mrs. Dorries) said? Would we? And should they support their friends? If the Minister sees only the determination of the system to enforce its rules, and to return detainees regardless of destination, he is creating an almost impossible situation in our detention centres. How can removal directions be carried out unless there is a sense of justice and a confidence behind them?
	As for the grounds of security that were given, I presume that it is thought that the women removed last night might be the focus of further resistance if they are given removal orders, or that they might be violent. But let us remember with whom we are dealing. These women have not committed any crime. For the most part, they have been living peacefully in the UK, on temporary admission, for many years. One woman was in the third year of her law degree at Leeds university, and was reporting regularly before she was picked up, and has been in Yarl's Wood for many months, so she has not been able to complete her degree. These are not convicted criminals with a history of violence, who, I remind the Minister, were placed at Yarl's Wood deliberately by the immigration service in the run-up to the incident there in February 2002. These are frightened African women, who are pleading for our compassion at a time when compassion is supposed to be oozing out of every pore of the Government when they talk about Africa.
	The potential of those women for violence can surely be discounted. One of them is so frail now that she was described to me this lunchtime, by an officer at Colinbrook—not a representative of the asylum agencies or organisations—as being so weak that she now finds it difficult to move. Where in this Bill is the British state given the power to break the spirit of women's resistance to going back to a country such as Zimbabwe? I am sorry that the Bill does not address those issues, but it provides a chance for the Government to review again their policy on asylum in the light of the hard case presented by today's conditions in a country to which they are prepared to return failed asylum seekers.
	The reason that I have spoken out in such a way today is that when a woman from a far country, with a black skin, is shunted around the detention estate, having committed no crime, in a situation in which the system does not believe that it owes an explanation to her, to citizens or to representatives, all our civil liberties are at risk. These women have been assaulted by the state's escort service, prevented from completing a degree, prevented from seeing an investigation completed into an allegation of assault, picked on perhaps for talking to an Opposition MP, and removed at night for no reason at all. Return those ladies to Zimbabwe? Some of them probably think that they have never left.

John Horam: That is a very fair point, which is why I said that the Government have to address this issue. The hon. Gentleman mentions other steps that the Government could take to ensure that the quality of decision making is improved, but I do not know what they might be. However, we in this House will be watching the Government to see how they deal with this important issue.
	As my right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden (David Davis) said in his opening speech, we have to see this Bill, specific and detailed as it is, in the context of the wider debate on immigration. There is no doubt that the question of the number of illegal immigrants is an important issue. I am particularly concerned by the Government's reprehensible attempt over a prolonged period to conceal the numbers, which has not enabled proper debate. Under the heading "Liars and bullies", The Sunday Times pointed out in last Sunday's leader that the Government attempted to conceal—[Interruption.] The Minister for Immigration, Citizenship and Nationality says that the article is wrong; he will doubtless address this point in his winding-up speech. The article pointed out that in the run-up to the general election, the Prime Minister denied that it was possible to estimate the number of illegal immigrants in this country. But we now know that such an estimate has been made—[Interruption.] The Minister says that no estimate has been made; again, he will doubtless address that issue in his winding-up speech. However, we are led to understand that there is such an estimate.
	I pay tribute to Migration Watch, an independent organisation that has, over the years, teased out some of the relevant issues. I am sure that the Office for National Statistics does a perfectly sensible, professional and technical job, given its very limited scope. Migration Watch has attempted to estimate the level of illegal immigration—along with other related factors—which is very difficult for Government statisticians to do. In that regard, it has performed a very important public service.
	When the Government get headlines in responsible journals such as "Liars and bullies", they really should be concerned about the way in which people are regarding the statistics that they produce. In some ways, my right hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset (Mr. Letwin) was right to say before the general election that the statistical element—be it the ONS or the organisation that produces crime statistics for the Home Office—should be separated from the Government and put under the aegis of this House. We need an independent body that reports to a Select Committee of this House, for example, and which is therefore able to make totally impartial judgments on the nature of such statistics and when they should be produced. That way, no one will have any doubt about the quality of, or background to, such statistics. That is the only way now that this particular Bill could give anyone any confidence that the facts are in any way correct. Otherwise, we will take the view—Labour Members must recognise it—that a great deal of it was simply spun in one way or another or concealed. That is not the way to have an honest debate on such a sensitive and important subject. The Government should reflect more on that.
	The Government have a responsibility to fit immigration into other aspects of policy. In that respect, we are all indebted to my right hon. Friend the Member for Hitchin and Harpenden (Mr. Lilley)—he will doubtless want to enter the debate at some stage—who has pointed out the link between the level of immigration and housing policy in the south-east. If I recall correctly, my right hon. Friend said in one of his pamphlets that the Deputy Prime Minister made 17 different statements without ever mentioning the fact that the prime driver of housing demand in the south-east was international immigration. It is the biggest factor and my right hon. Friend estimates—I am not trying to grab his speech—that it could be as much as 40 per cent. For anyone living in a suburban area of outer London, that is a huge factor. We are losing nurses, teachers and others who can no longer afford to live in places like Bromley. We must address that problem seriously: it is not good enough to consider only the supply of housing without taking account of the demand. If we do not mention that critical factor at all, we are not likely to get serious policy or even serious discussion of policy.
	It is also important, as my hon. Friend the Member for North-East Bedfordshire said, to take account of the international context. He eloquently raised a point about Zimbabwe. We have all had a debate—quite rightly, in my view—about Africa over the last two weeks and we are to have more of it this week. Last year, I went to Botswana, 40 per cent. of whose adult population has AIDS. I found that the people there were complaining about losing their nurses to the UK. That country is effectively being deskilled by demand in this country to fill gaps in our national health service. In many African countries, up to a third of graduates in any one year come to Europe. How can capacity be built to deal with the sort of problems that Africa faces, particularly given the lack of leadership—in some countries, corrupt and venal leadership—when a third of a country's graduates are disappearing to Europe every year? That applies even more to the Caribbean. The problem has to be tackled on a moral and practical basis as well as a domestic UK basis.
	A final point put very eloquently by my right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden is that there is clearly a division of Government opinion on this matter. In his speech at Gateshead before the last general election, the present Home Secretary seemed to be saying that all immigration was welcome. Indeed, he wished that we had more immigrants of all kinds—students, refugees, economic migrants and so forth. The Prime Minister, however, in an attempt to win the election, was obviously setting out targets and trying to assure everyone that immigration levels would come down. The number of asylum seekers has come down, but the fact is that there is no intellectual coherence about Government policy. The lack of management is stark and the attempt to stifle debate by obscuring and denying the facts—

Peter Lilley: I am grateful for the opportunity to speak after the hon. Member for Walthamstow (Mr. Gerrard), who brought to bear his considerable expertise in an important speech that should be read in conjunction with the truly remarkable speech by my hon. Friend the Member for North-East Bedfordshire (Alistair Burt). He highlighted how painful, sensitive and harrowing it can be to remove people from this country to a country as ghastly as Zimbabwe. The hon. Gentleman reminded us that those problems of removal increase the longer someone has been in this country. The longer the time, the more harrowing and difficult removal becomes.
	The hon. Gentleman also highlighted that, in a shameful move ahead of the election and in order to sound tough, the Government announced that there would be no automatic right of settlement after four years and no right of settlement at all for unskilled workers, effectively creating a category of guest worker. It sounded tough and perhaps popular in some quarters, but all hon. Members know that it has probably created an unworkable situation. The longer people have been here, the more they have established roots—they may have got married and had children—and removal becomes ever more difficult.
	We should remember the evidence that Dr. Teitelbaum gave to Congress on that point:
	"There is virtually no such thing as a temporary immigrant from a low wage economy to a high wage economy . . . Don't be tempted by the siren song of temporary worker programs. If they involve movement from poor countries to rich countries, they universally prove to be more permanent than temporary, and very difficult to turn off once turned on."
	I would add that they inevitably involve inhumanity if turned off. It is far more sensible and humane to limit immigration at the initial stage than to allow people to come here temporarily.
	Recent debates in this Chamber have been oversubscribed. It is remarkable that on such a controversial subject, we are not subject to a time limit and only a few Labour Members have wished to speak. Even on this side of the House, our numbers are limited. I cannot help feeling that that reflects people's reluctance to participate in debates about immigration because all too often those debates are curtailed by accusations of racism, which are freely bandied about and recklessly applied to anybody who implies that any greater restriction should be placed on immigration. When I became involved in the immigration issue—which was almost by accident, because I was studying the housing issue and discovered that housing policy was largely driven by Home Office immigration policy—I was warned by all my friends, who had let me be reckless enough to write pamphlets in favour of legalising cannabis, that I should not write about immigration. They said that I would be written off as a cranky libertarian or a dangerous racist. What I am about to say will probably have me written off on both counts.
	The Bill is about handling illegal migrants, failed asylum seekers, illegal entrants and those who have overstayed their visas. However, illegal immigration is simply the flipside of the lawful migration coin. The Government say that we need lawful migration because it is good for us. We need not just skilled people, but unskilled people. The Prime Minister has said that we need people to fill unskilled jobs that people living here are not prepared to do. We are told that lawful immigration increases the growth of our economy, and that the more there is, the faster it will grow. We are told that immigrants pay more in tax than they draw in benefits and other costs on the public sector, so the more immigration, the less tax the rest of us will have to pay. We are told that we need immigration to pay our future pensions, so the more immigrants we have, the fewer the difficulties of coping with the pension problem in the future.
	I shall discuss the credibility of those claims in a moment, but if they are true they imply that the more immigration there is, of both skilled and unskilled workers, the greater the benefits for the rest of us. The question inevitably arises, why, if economic migration is good for the rest of us, do the Government want to send back failed asylum seekers, illegal immigrants and over-stayers, who are, after all, economic migrants? The Government might say that it is a question of numbers; it is good for us, but there is a limit to the number that we can accommodate or absorb. However, they say that it is not a question of numbers. If it were, it would be natural and right to set a limit for that reason; but the Government say, no, there must be no limit to the numbers. They spent the whole of their election campaign ridiculing and opposing that idea. The Home Secretary and his predecessor said that there can be no upper limit to the number of immigrants who should be allowed into this country, and the current Home Secretary has said:
	"we want more immigration, more people coming to study, to work . . . to look for refuge".
	If immigration is a good thing, we have to ask whether we can have too much of it. I do not ask such questions rhetorically, so when I faced up to the problem I ended up writing a pamphlet entitled "Too much of a good thing?". When I started looking into the issues, my first conclusion was, if I am honest, not so much a conclusion as a prejudice. It came from living in areas with a high concentration of immigrants, from my experience and that of my neighbours and from working with immigrants as my constituents. I concluded that the overwhelming majority of immigrants are decent, hard-working, law-abiding people who come to this country wanting to better their lot and that of their families, and to make a positive contribution to the country. Most of them do. Indeed, to a large degree, they epitomise the very virtues of enterprise and family cohesion that Conservatives particularly admire, so we start off with a natural prejudice in favour of immigrants. We think of them as a good thing. We welcome those who are in the UK and we feel, as it were, at one with them.
	I then considered the Government's economic arguments in favour of large-scale immigration. There can certainly be no reason to oppose it on the grounds of the character of the people who want to come to this country, but what are the arguments for and against encouraging large-scale migration? The first remarkable thing I found was that almost no economists thought that there were substantial economic benefits from large-scale migration. I have to confess that when my pamphlet went to print, I had not read what is probably the definitive work on the subject, published last December in the Population and Development Review, by Coleman and Rowthorn, entitled "The Economic Effects of Immigration into the United Kingdom". Their conclusion was:
	"We conclude that the economic consequences of large-scale immigration are mostly trivial, negative or transient; that the interests of the more vulnerable sections of the domestic population may well be damaged; and that any small fiscal or other economic benefits are unlikely to bear comparison with immigration's substantial and permanent demographic and environmental impact. We demonstrate that such findings are in line with those from other developed countries".

Charles Walker: Thank you for calling me, Madam Deputy Speaker. I assure you that there will be no academic arguments from me—I leave those to my hon. Friends.
	As hon. Members on both sides of the House have pointed out, this country has a proud tradition of taking people in from abroad. We benefit from foreign doctors, nurses, teachers and, of course, bankers, so there are many positive aspects to immigration. However, many of the advantages that immigration brings to this country are being obscured by a system that is still widely perceived to be failing. It is incumbent on all elected politicians in the Chamber to find a way forward that restores public confidence in our immigration and asylum system.
	I am worried that if we fail to fix the system, many more constituencies throughout the country will be faced with the problems that we currently experience in Broxbourne with the British National party.As many hon. Members are aware, the BNP uses the problems surrounding this country's immigration system as an active campaigning tool to recruit people to its standard. Whether appealing to Conservative or Labour voters, the BNP message is the same: "The established parties don't care who comes to this country. They want to create a free-for-all at your expense." Thankfully, most people still have nothing to do with that nonsense. Their concerns about immigration are far outweighed by their dislike for the BNP and its hateful policies, but we cannot rely indefinitely on the good sense of the British public to keep the BNP at bay. We must also do our bit as their elected representatives.
	The BNP already has a councillor in Broxbourne and at the last general election it managed to double its vote to 2,000. It came within a whisker of saving its deposit. Our one major success was that we stopped it doubling its representation on Broxbourne council by taking the second seat in Rosedale ward. However, the BNP remains a threat. In my constituency, it is well organised, works hard on the ground and has the capacity to draw in activists from across the region. Its campaigning techniques are aggressive and at times intimidating. As one constituent said to me, "It's hard to slam the door in their face when they've got their bodies in the way."
	The BNP message is deeply depressing and makes no concession to the truth. Every black or Asian face in the community belongs to an illegal immigrant, with no distinction made. We worked hard to beat the BNP in Rosedale. We had an excellent local candidate, Dave Lewis—

Tony McNulty: I know that the shadow Home Secretary is at the reception that my hon. Friend has just come from, but that is by the bye. It was a courtesy for the right hon. Gentleman to tell me that he might not be back for the wind-up speeches; what he is doing is not my business at all, in oh so many ways—so many different ways.
	The right hon. Gentleman made some points about the existing legislation in relation to the introduction of civil penalties for illegal working. There are several reasons for what we have done. The section 8 legislation to prevent the use of illegal workers, introduced in 1997, before May, was flawed and provided a poor basis for launching prosecutions against employers. Last year, we took action to strengthen section 8 by reforming the system of document checks, and there were 10 convictions.
	Furthermore, I would say to those who ask why it has taken so long to do anything about section 8 that it is important to remember that there is other legislation under which cases have been brought, especially for facilitation. In 2002, there were 62 convictions for facilitation in magistrates courts and 147 in Crown courts. Some of those cases will have involved people who import and supply illegal workers. We can go into the matter in more detail in Committee, but we think that civil penalties will be a swifter and more effective way of tackling negligent employers. The new "knowingly" offence, with a custodial penalty, will be used to deal with those who deliberately use illegal workers but cannot be reached either by the law on facilitation or the original flawed law under section 8. I welcome any contributions to strengthen those provisions, because we need to go in that direction. We are not talking about bona fide employers who try their best to establish what is going on with their employees.
	If the debate is shifting away from where we are at with the asylum system—notwithstanding the point made about removals, to which I shall return—to a substantive debate about where we are at with managed migration, it must deal in substance with illegal working and the employer's role. That is an entirely fair point and we can explore it. Somebody said that that was all very well, but that in terms of managed migration there were only 12 individuals in the central team. I cannot remember who made that point, so I apologise to the hon. Member; I think that it may have been the Conservative Whip with whom I have the delight to serve on the Identity Cards Bill, the hon. Member for Hertford and Stortford (Mr. Prisk). He is entirely right, but that is all we need at the centre. By the time the law is introduced, there will be about 1,200 warranted immigration officers with full rights to employ the fixed penalties. That is where we want our staff, out in the community dealing with such matters.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent, Central (Mark Fisher), who is no longer in the Chamber, made some fair points about massive dispersal and we have to deal with that, but I take issue with much of what he said about the substance of the Bill. I do not believe that the system in terms of either the Bill or the wider context of the five-year plan is, to quote him, too hostile to genuine refugees. Nor do I believe what he said about adjudication. The key point at the end of his speech, with which I entirely disagree, was that the Bill would do nothing to enhance Britain's reputation for providing a safe haven. As my hon. Friend is not in the Chamber I shall take that up with him at another time, but I do not agree with his point. The Bill must be seen firmly in the context of the five-year plan, as the Home Secretary said. Much of the plan can be achieved through immigration rule changes and secondary legislation, but much of what is in the Bill provides the building blocks for further secondary legislation and to tweak parts of the existing system.
	I did not catch much of the speech of the hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr. Carmichael) in the Chamber, but I heard it elsewhere. It is the second time today that one of his speeches has delighted me, because we were debating a Bill together this morning. It was a terribly—not terrible—measured and temperate contribution and I look forward to discussing some of those matters further with him. I shall come on to some of them later.
	One of the hon. Gentleman's specific points was that the Government had not yet made the case for using civil penalties against employers. That is a fair point and we can discuss it further in Committee. As I said, we believe that civil penalties can be an effective tool to encourage employers to adopt appropriate checks to prevent clandestine entry.
	The hon. Gentleman asked about a new inspection regime in terms of civil penalties. I can say that the immigration service will continue to carry out intelligence-led operational visits as now, and civil penalties do not presage a new inspection regime. The inspection service only works where it is intelligence that leads the problem.
	Clause 19 provides for the Government to issue a code of practice to employers on the avoidance of discrimination. Given that our deliberations will now be after the summer recess, I will try to ensure that at least the headline elements or framework of that code of practice—my hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow (Mr. Gerrard) and others mentioned this—are available to the Committee during our deliberations. If an official falls over in the Box, that is because it is the first time that I have told them that.
	We need to discuss more fully some of the other points raised by the hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland. He voiced concern that clause 1 does not give a right of appeal to people who have been granted protection for human rights reasons when the Home Office decides that their circumstances have changed and that it is now safe for them to return to their country of origin. Actually, the clause does provide a right of appeal to people who were previously recognised as refugees, against the decision that they no longer need protection, but we can explore that further in Committee. It contains an order-making power to extend that appeal right to other classes of people and it is our intention to use that power to extend the right to those granted humanitarian protection for human rights reasons. That sounds convoluted. It deals with the hon. Gentleman's point, but we can explore that in far more depth in Committee.
	I hope that my hon. Friend the Member for Leicester, East is resisting the urge to rebel, whether he is on his own in that rebellion or otherwise—if indeed he can manage to get a vote tonight. I fully concur with what people have said about his long, long record in this area, on an entirely cross-party and non-partisan basis. He is an expert, and he was very helpful to me in 1997 and during my first couple of years as an MP—and has been helpful since—when I was first dealing with a substantial community. As he rightly says, all the issues about family visitor appeals are outwith the Bill. They are not in substance part of the Bill. They will be among the elements that can be more readily discussed on immigration rule changes. My hon. Friend has already led a delegation, for want of a better word, of Labour Back Benchers to see me specifically on this issue. I told him when we went through the issues that I would be more than happy to reconvene that meeting and have another in September or October to let him know exactly where our thoughts were in terms of where to go with that rule change.

Tony McNulty: Let me explore that point and come back to my hon. Friend. I am not sure whether suggestion is appropriate; it may well end up being undermined as a sort of formalised second-guessing by every ECO in the world.

Neil Gerrard: May I put it my hon. Friend that the provision that refugees were given indefinite leave at the same time as they were granted refugee status is something that we introduced? I have still not heard any reason to reverse that policy. What is the reason for reversing it?

Tony McNulty: That is, at least in part, what I was going to start to elaborate on today, but I am sure that we will discuss it more over the summer and subsequently in Committee.
	More generally, we are making changes to increase the economic benefits to the UK of permanent settlement and to introduce requirements closer to the rights and obligations of full citizenship.
	Secondly, we are applying the principle that the UK should offer people protection and refuge for as long as they need it, but if conditions in their home countries change and it is safe for them to go back, we would expect them to do so. The Geneva convention says that it shall cease to apply to someone who
	"can no longer, because the circumstances in connection with which he has been recognised as a refugee have ceased to exist, continue to refuse to avail himself of the protection of the country of his nationality."
	The measure is thus within the spirit of the 1951 convention, but we can discuss that in full another time.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow was right to say that we should look for a range of measures and actions to tackle people who use illegal workers beyond what is in the Bill and the five-year strategy. I totally agree, and that was why we supported the Gangmasters (Licensing) Act 2004. We are developing joint working with other workplace enforcement bodies, such as the Health and Safety Commission, the Department for Work and Pensions, the national minimum wage inspectorate and others. That work includes establishing a joint pilot scheme in the midlands to examine such matters in more detail. We are working closely with employers, unions and others to examine the whole issue of illegal working, as it is right and proper to do.
	My hon. Friend said that a wide power was being sought to define the grounds on which entry clearance appeals could be brought, but that power already exists under the Asylum and Immigration (Treatment of Claimants, etc.) Act 2004. He made an important point, as did the hon. Member for North-East Bedfordshire (Alistair Burt), among others, about the oversight extended to all detention centres. As my hon. Friend knows, Her Majesty's chief inspector of prisons already has statutory oversight over longer-term immigration detention facilities, as well as exercising oversight over short-term holding facilities and escort services, although that is currently done only by invitation. The Bill will put all immigration detention facilities on the same statutory footing, so I can give my hon. Friend the assurance that he wants.
	I did not accept the Liberal Democrat point that removing appeal rights for students would drive them to our international competitors because the countries with which we are competing for the brightest and best international students, such as Canada, Australia and New Zealand, do not offer appeals against the refusal of student visas in the first place. I do not want to underestimate the difficulties of the university sector in attracting foreign students. There is a combination of factors behind that such as the strength of the pound and the fact that our competitors are getting far better and thus catching up with us. All those matters need to be put into the mix, but a £50 increase in visa fees for students who spend between £20,000 and £30,000 over three years would not represent such a problem. I cannot emphasise enough that no aspect of the measure runs counter to everything that we say about the contribution that overseas students make throughout the university sector. We set up a joint working group with the education sector to examine in detail how we can work together to ensure that that continues to happen.
	The hon. Member for Twickenham (Dr. Cable) made a perfectly fine and temperate speech, but he got sidelined by talking about some 50 tests that employers must carry out. That is for the birds—it is simply not the case at all.
	I am hopeful—perhaps naively—that following the disgraceful emphasis that the official Opposition put on these matters and the way in which they did so, they now have a sort of collective corporate hangover and perhaps a little bit of shame. We have a window in which we can have a reasoned and mature cross-party debate about what we want from our asylum and managed migration systems and the overall contribution that both elements can make to the vibrancy of our country in the 21st century. We need to say all the time that immigrants make a substantial contribution to this country—and not simply in economic terms. We will always cherish both our responsibilities and our record on being party to the 1951 convention and our treatment of refugees.
	If the Bill, if nothing else, augers the start of that mature debate not only in the Chamber and across the parties, but in our media as well—that might be hoping for too much—it will have served its purpose. Perversely, the nasty ultra-right-wing excesses of the Conservative party might then also have served their purpose. I commend the Bill to the House.
	Question put and agreed to.
	Bill accordingly read a Second time.

G8 MEETING

George Galloway: It has been some time since I caught your eye, Mr. Speaker, so I am extremely grateful to the mystery hand that guides the lottery that chooses the subject for the Adjournment debate. To be successful on this subject the night before the G8 convenes in Gleneagles is exceedingly good fortune.
	On the subject of mystery hands, I should welcome my erstwhile hon. Friend the Member for Pontypridd (Dr. Howells), who is now a Foreign Office Minister, to his post. I good-naturedly remind him that while he now has access to my MI6 file, remembering him well as I do from our days on the barricades together, I have access to his file from King street, Covent Garden. [Interruption.] The Minister affects not to know who was headquartered in King street, Covent Garden, but I think some of us in the House know the answer to that very well.
	It is equally well known that I have a low opinion of this Government. But even I never imagined that they would try to execute a cynical U-turn in their international reputation on the sea of bodies laid out every three seconds as a result of poverty in the world such as that which we have been witnessing these last few weeks. Browno and Blairof, or Blairo and Brownof, or however else this self-styled Lennon and McCartney like to see themselves, have, however, been rumbled—not only by the quarter of a million British people who marched in Edinburgh at the weekend but even, now, by the leadership of Make Poverty History, whom the Government imagined they had in their pocket. Quoted in The Guardian this morning, Steve Tibbett of ActionAid said this:
	"It is shocking that the government is using millions of poor people to score a PR coup."
	I do not know where Mr. Tibbett has been living, but it is not shocking with this Government. "Look behind the rhetoric", he said,
	"and the reality falls far short. We are still nowhere near a deal that will effectively tackle global poverty. So far the UK government is largely serving up spin and hype."
	The Government are engaged in a carefully calculated deception of public opinion to try to draw a veil over the disaster in Iraq and Afghanistan and to scramble up at least the foothills of the moral high ground on the greatest issue facing the world today. More than half the world's population lives on half the money it costs to keep a cow in the Elysian fields of the European Union.
	This has been deliberately reduced by new Labour to a question of heavily conditional debt cancellation for some countries in one continent. The conditions allowing a takeover of their countries' economies by the International Monetary Fund, Paul Wolfowitz's World Bank, and the vulture capitalists and robber barons of the globalised corporations will leave the people thus relieved even worse off than they were to start with. Seventy-seven per cent. of the people living on less than $2 a day in the 1990s lived in countries being strangled by free-market structural reforms implemented by exactly that unholy trinity.
	One in six in the world has no access to clean water, and four die every minute from drinking it dirty. The neo-liberal axis believes in privatisation as a purifier, hence the fiasco of the British Government's attempt to pour free-market water down the throats of the poor in Tanzania—a scheme recently sunk in derision at the considerable expense of the British taxpayer.
	Every day, more than 6,000 people die from AIDS in Africa alone, largely unable to access readily available medication. One hundred million children have no school to go to and 30,000 die every day from diseases that kill next to no children in the rich world. Everything the neo-liberal consensus proposes for Africa has already been tried in Latin America, where it failed utterly. Presumably that is why that region has not had a look-in in recent Government discourse.
	One in five Latin Americans live in extreme poverty while more than 40 per cent. are characterised as poor. That is one reason why, from Bolivia to Brazil, from Cuba to Caracas, a radical challenge is being mounted now on the streets to the prescriptions that the Government propose to dole out to the people of Africa.
	Just as one cannot get slim through eating low-fat chocolate when it is not part of a calorie-controlled diet, one cannot make poverty history through conditional, highly selective debt cancellation without a profound change in the distribution of wealth and power in the world. Such a shift is impossible to imagine at Gleneagles. That is why I shall be marching there tomorrow, with thousands of others, making it clear that we will not make poverty history until we make the G8 and its system history.
	Let us be clear: the poor people in the poor countries do not owe the rich in the rich countries anything. In so far as they are in debt, it was not incurred by them but by overwhelmingly unelected dictatorships of one kind or another, usually backed in the cold war days by the west. The money was often spent on self-aggrandisement and western weapons. In any case, those original loans were long ago repaid, but for the usury of the hyper-interest charged by western lenders to bloat their £1 billion-a-year-plus profits. Poor countries would be entirely justified in tearing up their debt repayment books and declaring, "We have already paid", and they might well add, "Far from us owing you money, you owe us."
	When the British empire, on which the sun never set because God would not trust us in the dark, arrived in the area then known as Bengal, it was one of the richest places in the world. When we left, it was one of the poorest. One does not have to be Einstein to work out what happened in between. The poor countries are poor because the rich countries became rich partly by making and keeping them poor. The great empires took away everything they could carry, including, in the case of Africa, the people themselves, whom we chained in the holds of ships and carried off as slaves. Until a seismic shift of wealth is made in reparation towards the people we robbed, justice will not be done.
	Yet huge wealth remains in the poor countries and in the effort and skills of their people. However, the economic system over which the G8 presides continues to loot and plunder, as alliances such as the Jubilee South coalition of debt campaigns and social movements from 40 countries throughout the poor world have made clear.
	Let us consider unfair trade and fuelling wars in and across colonial boundaries. Why are the British Government giving Uganda and Rwanda blue-eyed-boy status when both are involved in the invasion of the Democratic Republic of Congo, thus further beggaring a country first pushed down a long slope to misery by the colonialist conspiracy against and the murder of the greatest of all African leaders—Patrice Lumumba—and by his hand-picked replacement Mobutu, who went on to become the greatest thief of the 20th century?
	All aid is made conditional on unfair trade—the erection of tariff barriers to poor country imports while demanding the destruction of any protection for their industries. As President Bush said:
	"We're not interested in supporting any Government that doesn't have open economies and open markets".
	Despite all that, Government mendacity has relentlessly maintained—in some cases flatly falsely, for example the Chancellor's repeated statements that he proposes 100 per cent. debt write-off for the poorest countries—that their proposals, if only they can persuade back-sliding Johnny foreigners, will make poverty history.
	In the words of Richard Bennett, chairman of Make Poverty History, when expressing his "dismay and serious concern" at the way in which Britain was presenting proposals for debt cancellation:
	"What is being discussed is emphatically not 100 per cent. debt cancellation for the world's poorest countries, but Government spokespeople continue to state and imply that it is".
	A small minority of the world's poorest countries will have significant debt cancellation if this deal is agreed. In the words of Ivy Maina from Kenya, who has travelled from ActionAid's Johannesburg office by bus:
	"Africa is counting on this summit to deliver. I was face to face with Gordon Brown, and nothing he said will reassure the millions of people relying on his government and other G8 leaders. I fear that if there are no further developments over the week, all I will have to take home from Scotland is bleak news."
	In place of the annual $125 billion in new money demanded by Make Poverty History if the G8 countries are to meet the UN aid target of 0.7 per cent. of gross national income, the G8 are offering just $25 billion for Africa, much of which is money that has already been pledged. In place of the $45 billion that would be released by 100 per cent. cancellation of the poorest countries' debts, the G8 are offering just over $1 billion in cancelled debt service payments—a fraction of what is required.
	War on Want, the World Development Movement, Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, People & Planet and many other organisations are now mounting a massive critique of the mendacity to which I have referred. It would simply be impossible to imagine that the story being told—